Network security management is becoming a more difficult problem as networks grow in size and become a more integral part of organizational operations. Attacks on networks are growing both due to the intellectual challenge such attacks represent for hackers and due to the increasing payoff for the serious attacker. Furthermore, the attacks are growing beyond the current capability of security management tools to identify and quickly respond to those attacks. As various attack methods are tried and ultimately repulsed, the attackers will attempt new approaches with more subtle attack features. Thus, maintaining network security is on-going, ever changing, and an increasingly complex problem.
Computer network attacks can take many forms and any one attack may include many security events of different types. Security events are anomalous network conditions each of which may cause an anti-security effect to a computer network. Security events include stealing confidential or private information; producing network damage through mechanisms such as viruses, worms, or Trojan horses; overwhelming the network's capability in order to cause denial of service, and so forth.
Contemporary malicious programs are capable of using accessible network storage for propagation between different computers. If a remote computer has an “opened share” (i.e. part of the storage that external computers have rights to modify), a malicious program can copy itself to the share or cause damage to data in the share. Modern network worms spread in this manner, and have an ability to quickly infest badly managed network environments. For new and unknown viruses, such improperly configured networks provide an ability to spread or cause damage.
There is thus a need for preventing virus propagation through opened share network environments.